Expert: Steve Nelson - 1/31/2011

Question
QUESTION: If the Big Bang initially resulted initially in a quark-gluon plasma, when and how did electrons enter the picture?  Were they there, right at the beginning, too; or were they the result of high-energy exchanges within the soon cooling plasma; or were they the result of nuclear processes once nuclei had been able to form?
I'd like to say that I really appreciate being able to ask you.

ANSWER: This is high-energy physics, which is a good bit outside my area of expertise.  I'm going to have to refer you to a reference on this subject, it's incredibly complicated beyond this resource:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark%E2%80%93gluon_plasma

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for your reply.  The Wikipedia link didn't really help - there's good coverage of plasmas as such, but not the original plasma that is thought to have existed in the first instance after the big bang - and consisting of quarks and gluons.  You say this is "high energy physics" - do you mean the field of expertise is high energy physics, or that the solution to my question is to be found in the high energy reactions possible in a solely quark-gluon plasma?

Do you have any other leads I could follow for a general answer to the origin of electrons?

Many thanks!

Answer
I'm more of a low-energy nuclear astrophysics guy, I mean that your answer is in the subfields of high energy physics and cosmology.  I'd tell you to contact Lawrence Krauss at ASU, my old department chair when I was an udergrad, but you probably won't get a response.  Then again, you might.

The thing is, it's pretty simple.  Quark-gluon plasma is unstable.  It has to decay into stable particles like protons and electrons (and neutrons, when they're bound inside a nucleus).  Quark-gluon plasma is theoretical and has only been really hinted at in our labs and not thoroughly studied, so the exact mode of decay and the nature of the substance isn't fully understood.  Your question will have to basically wait until actual experimental physics catches up with it and can tell you what the "true nature" of an electron is and about its origin.